Better Unanswered
by slipstream
Summary: As a reporter, April O'Neil doesn't believe in questions that she shouldn't know the answers to. "Okay," she says, pretending for a moment longer that she's not in her bathroom talking to her own reflection with an ironing board and a stack of pillows belted to her back. "Let the experiment begin." (AKA, Exactly How DO Giant Mutant Turtles Use the Bathroom? 2k14 verse)


She's at a party the first time she considers the question.

It's an okay enough party, all things considered: nice building, good drinks, decent music played at a volume slightly too loud for networking (Vern's excuse for dragging her along) and just perfect for dancing alone in a shadowed corner while she ignores her current unemployment and the string of guys trying to edge their way into her groove.

Drunker than she planned on getting at the start of the night, but not so drunk that she needs the toilet for anything other than a quick pit stop, April stumbles into the bathroom and hitches up her skirt to get down to the business at hand.

The bathroom is blissfully cool and quiet, the music a low thump that rattles the door on the backbeat and the raucous crowd cut to buzzing hum. Some of these people used to be her coworkers. Everyone else is in the industry, one way or another. Vern insists that none of them know the circumstances of her firing, and even if they did, she was friends with the _Falcon_ now, so who was going to care?

("Just _get out there_ and _meet_ somebody, O'Neil. Preferably somebody with an un-mutated genome and connections at MSNBC.")

The handsome pedestal sink is just close enough for her to lean over and brace against it with her cheek, relishing in the cool touch of porcelain.

She's just so _tired_ of all these people, the pretense and pressure of their lives. The complete and utter _bullshit_ of it all.

The handkerchief hem of her black cocktail dress dips dangerously close to a dribble left on the floor by an earlier, more inebriated guest, so she gathers the fabric in one fist and yanks it forward, arms folded heavily across her knees.

For some reason, she wonders whether Donnie ever has to do the same thing with those solar panels of his.

She snorts, imagining the clatter of metal and plastic as he gathers his kusazuri up around his waist like the closing petals of a giant, Bluetooth compatible flower. The bathroom seems to tilt around her, the slate-tiled floor rocking first one way, then the other like the deck of a storm-tossed ocean liner. Definitely drunker than she thought. Irresponsible. Leonardo would probably take her gently by the hand and give her a long and involved lecture the warrior's duty to remain vigilant and in absolute control of their senses at all times. Fifteen going on forty seven, with an iron-wrought sense of propriety fused so tightly to every bone of his body that there's barely room in his shell to fart.

Unbidden, an image of Leonardo daintily scooping up his tea towels before lowering himself into a dignified squat, the swords on his back clanking slightly as they hit the tank.

"Hey!" Someone knocks on the door. "You okay in there?"

"I'm fine," she gasps, struggling to wipe the tears away one-handed without ruining her make-up, ribs aching and faintly light-headed.

"You sure?" The voice is soft, concerned. "Are you here with someone? Do you need a cab home?"

' _No thank you_ ' is what she means to say. Instead she thinks about Raphael and all of that _fringe_ and bursts into another uncontrollable howl of laughter that, in the faceless woman at the door's defense, does sound remarkably close to broken sobbing.

At least Vern doesn't have to come in and physically pull her off of the toilet. Whatever story he tells the gaggle of wary women hovering protectively around the door is good enough that they let him tag along as they make their way down to the lobby and over to a waiting taxi.

"Text me when you get back to your place," says a tall woman with neon pink lips and arms like Michelle Obama plugging her number into April's phone. Every time Vern tries to edge his way into the open back seat she shifts her body between them with a frown that says she's not about to trust him just because he's famous. "Do you have somebody there waiting up for you?"

"Yes," April lies. Her roommate moved out last week. She's got enough savings to cover next month's rent on her own and another five months on the lease unless she can find a subletter in even more desperate straits than she is. To Vern, she adds: "I'm fine, really. Go back to the party."

Vern looks vaguely disappointed, spray-tanned fingers fluttering restlessly where they poke out of his sling. "Are you sure? I can just—"

The taxi door shuts with a bang.

" _Text me_ ," repeats the woman, tapping on the window with her phone. April shoots her a thumbs-up through the glass, lips trembling as she struggles not to cry for real this time.

Three weeks ago she had a burgeoning career in a field she loved, an apartment with Ikea furniture she bought new with actual money, a roommate who thought she was only half-crazy, a reluctant acceptance about the circumstances of her father's death, and an absolute certainty that all of the stories of giant reptiles in the sewers were one hundred percent bullshit.

Three weeks ago her life made _sense_.

"Was that the _Falcon_?" asks her driver, craning his neck for a final look as he merges into the night traffic. "You actually know that guy? Hey, if I pull back around, do you think he'd sign my—"

" _Please_ ," April pleads, head falling heavily into her hands. "Just _drive_."

* * *

As a young New Yorker with student loans, April O'Neil has lived in her fair share of dives. Roaches, mold, bed bugs, secret peep holes leading into her landlord's neighboring unit, she's been there, done that, gotten the restraining order. Once she spent two months sleeping on an inflatable mattress in somebody's closet (clothes included) while working an unpaid internship at ABC. Another time she'd had to keep her entire wardrobe in sealed Ziploc bags and Febreeze herself down every time she left her apartment because her roommate, while nice enough in all other areas of life, had a more than slight vampire apocalypse obsession and insisted on garlanding every door and window in their place with long strings of home-roasted garlic (she'd told all of her more olfactory-gifted friends at the time that she lived above a 24-hour Italian restaurant).

But. Still. As much as she loves the guys—and she _does_ love them, fiercely and frustratingly—there's no escaping the fact that they live in an actual, fully-functional sewer.

"Hellooo~o!" she calls, shoving the massive, bank vault-esque front door closed with one foot. "Anybody home?" The Lair is empty at first glance, but knowing Donnie her door code triggered an alert in whatever bowel of the city's infrastructure they're camped out in. She carefully sidesteps around one of the stray pools of unidentifiable moisture that puddle in the low spots despite Donnie's labyrinth of cobbled-together sump pumps. "It's okay if you're not, I'll just take all this delicious takeout home and eat it all. By. My. Self."

That does the trick. "What'd'ya bring us?" Michelangelo asks, swooping down from the overhead pipeworks to grab the topmost Styrofoam container and peer inside. His face blooms with genuine delight. "Pad thai! Aw Apes, you shouldn't have!"

The rest of the turtles aren't far behind, noses sniffing the air greedily. "Yer gonna spoil him rotten," grumbles Raphael, making a grab for the second container. "All this fancy topside food. Gonna put him off his usual grub."

Donatello is the next to take his serving, though his gratitude is visibly tinged with guilt. "You really don't have to go through all this trouble. I know freelancing isn't exactly the most lucrative way to get back on your feet."

April waves them off as casually as she can. She has yet to eat a single meal with the turtles that she did not personally ensure wasn't at least partially scavenged.

"Seriously, don't worry about it. I just got a callback for a job at Channel 6. It's for an off-air position, a lot of pavement pounding and data gathering behind the scenes, but I think it's what I need to earn my reputation back and set me up to angle my way back into a serious reporting role."

" _Really?_ " Donnie gushes. "That's awesome, April!" Over his shoulder, Mikey drops a spring roll onto the ground, scoops it up, and eats it unhesitatingly.

April tries her best not to gag. At least their new place _smells_ relatively better, if still distinctly mildew-y under the overwhelming cloud of patchouli.

It's Wednesday, which means it's family movie night. It's Leo's turn to pick, and given what she's learned about him in these last few weeks April is expecting something somber and black and white, maybe a classic Japanese horror film as a compromise between his and his brothers' interests, but to her surprise he selects a battered and brightly colored DVD case from the shelf, the cover blazened with a beautiful, dark-haired couple embracing beneath a title in golden Hindi script.

Mikey groans and slumps into the couch cushions. "Come _on_ , Leo. Not another musical!"

"Oh yes," Leo says, with more unbridled relish than she thought him capable of. " _Another musical_." A chorus of groans from the rest of the assembled clan; even Master Splinter, otherwise stoic in his usual seat in the recliner, twitches his whiskers inscrutably. April burrows herself deeper into the immense couch cushions and kicks up her feet, ready to enjoy herself subtitles or no subtitles.

It's a good movie, funnier than she expected with the bonus entertainment value of watching the brothers try to mimic the dance moves. Leo's obviously seen this movie more than once, his poise perfect and movements fluid as he snaps between one pose and the next, but Raph's mouth, for all his feigned reluctance to join in the live choreography, matches Leo's syllable for syllable in a perfect lip synch of the second act's climactic duet.

It's so much fun, in fact, that she forgets just how _long_ Bollywood films can be.

April has completely lost all track of time when her bladder sends out a sudden, intense reminder. She tries to repress it as long as she can, mind racing with a million thoughts about the millions of bodies above flushing millions upon millions of gallons of liquefied waste through the slowly rusting pipes overhead.

If anything, it makes the urge _worse_.

"I'm sorry," she says defeatedly just as the movie decides to switch narrative focus to develop yet _another_ subplot. "Is there a bathroom I can use?"

This seems to be some sort of long-awaited signal. Mikey leaps to his feet with a start, upsetting the popcorn. Raph starts to protest, but a hard elbow to his side from Donnie makes him snap his mouth shut mid-syllable. All eyes save Mikey's are fixed pointedly in any direction but hers.

Mikey bows, arms to one side in a vague indication of the direction they'll be travelling. "Allow me, _mah-deh-mwah-zelle_."

He leads her to a small door tucked away in a secluded, quiet corner of the lair. April can't shake the feeling as they walk that four pairs of eyes had locked expectantly onto her back the moment it was turned, a suspicion not belayed by the flurry of whispered mumblings just audible over the movie. She does her best to ignore it, bracing herself for whatever sanitation horror awaits her as Mikey flings open open the door with the sparkling gravitas of one of Barker's Beauties.

Anyplace other than New York, the bathroom would be tiny, but compared to the facilities at her first student apartment it's positively palatial. The walls are wallpapered with a hodge-podge assortment of band fliers, X Games posters, and Rolling Stone cut outs that remind her of some of the seedier clubs she used to frequent back in her college days. The toilet is a deep, avocado green, with a mismatched seat and lid in dusty pink. The sink is a bucket from Home Depot attached to the wall with what looks like carriage bolts and half a bath tub's worth of caulking foam, but there's a faucet and running water and a full roll of toilet paper and a cracked mirror mounted at roughly human height. There's even a little shelf with a basket full of fragrant (if slightly grubby) decorative soaps, pastel shells and seahorses and cracked silver dollars filling the bathroom with a powdery, faintly beachy scent.

Part of her can't help but appreciate how _nice_ it is. Even the X Games posters. The patchwork tile floor seems to sparkle when contrasted against the rough concrete of the main Lair, and the slightly raveled hand towel folded over the rim of the bucket sink is conspicuously plump, as if fresh from the dryer. There's even a magazine rack full of water-warped issues of National Geographic and a collection of well-loved Spider-Man comics.

"Donnie let me help with the sink," Mikey explains. "He's been teaching us more about plumbing so he's got more time to work on the vehicles and stuff."

He watches her take it all in with bright, eager eyes. She wonders if he knows about the bottle of industrial-strength mango citrus body spray she keeps in her purse to make the subway trip home mostly bearable for anyone within a five-foot radius of her.

"Wow," she says, forcing herself to step purposefully across the threshold as if it was any other reasonably clean bathroom and not one shared by four teenage reptiles and a giant rat in the middle of a sewer system flowing with the shit of eight and a half million people. "You did a great job, Mikey."

" _Really?_ I mean—" He leans heavily on the doorframe, surveying the bathroom with the benign pleasure of a benevolent monarch overlooking his kingdom. "Yeah, I _did_ , didn't I?"

April nods, shifting her weight fretfully from one foot to another.

"Um... Do you mind?"

"What? _Oh!_ " He snaps to with a jerk, smile sheepish as he backs out of the doorway. "Sorry! I'll just leave you to it, then. If you need anything, just holler! I'll be right—"

" _MIKEY!"_ bellows a chorus of concerned citizens from the couch.

"—over on the other side of the Lair. Where I won't be able to hear anything happening in here at all, because that would be like, super, _super_ creepy."

Mikey beats a hasty retreat back to his brothers, who greet his return with an assault of what sounds suspiciously like slaps upside the head. Thoroughly bemused but trying for the sake of her poor bladder not to laugh, April, closes the bathroom door, turns, and finally spots the sign—no doubt snitched from some unknown restaurant—hanging proudly on its back:

 _PLEASE SEAT YOURSELF._

* * *

There was a long stretch of her life where April had tried to forget the turtles. Tried to forget Splinter, the pain of watching the other rats in his cohort vanish one by one until he was the only mammalian survivor of her father's experiments, the pine smell of his cage mixed with the damp muskiness of the aquariums, the tick-clack of the autoclave, the white hunch of her father's back bent over a microscope. Tried to forget everything about those long evenings together with him, watching him work, in the vain hope that it would make it easier to live without him.

Finding them again had been like taking a step back in time, enthralling and overwhelming all at once as the hard edges of her adult self snagged against the soft warmth of belonging, of _wantedness_ , she hasn't experienced since childhood.

Slowly, week by week, month into month, her walls start to lower.

After she interrupts one of Leonardo's obsessive cleaning fits (which become obsessive cleaning "mandatory training sessions" whenever any of the brothers dare mock them) and sees how sterile their kitchen is compared to her own, sees how eager they are to share this part of their lives with her, she starts to join them for something other than take-out and a movie. She still can't eat a lot of the things they cook—her stomach is only human, after all—but sitting with them at their table, laughing with them, open and honest and _herself_ again after so long as this driven stranger, is like sitting down to a feast after a long, lonely famine.

And yet...

She can't help but notice, over time, that the bathroom soaps never seem to move. While the reading material changes up from time to time, the hand towel, if not freshly laundered, is always exactly where she left it, the floor suspiciously free of old blood stains and stray boot prints. Despite the salvaged fixtures and dense cluster of magazine clippings coating the walls, the little bath somehow feels _new_ each time she steps in, almost un-lived in.

As if it was a guest bath for one.

"I'm not imposing, am I, Master Splinter?"

The old rat sets down his cup of tea, ears low and whiskers bristled inquisitively. "My child, what could ever give you that impression?"

She shifts on her mat, her own tea cooling undrunk between her hands, but can't find the voice to express this feeling inside of her.

They've done so much to make a place for themselves, here underground. A place that fits them in all the ways the human world can't. A _home_. A home they're now changing to try to fit around her. Extra cushions on the couch so her feet can rest on the floor; a bathroom all her own she doesn't have to share with four teenage boys; a shelf in the kitchen cupboard with still-sealed packaged foods and undented cans with prominent expiration dates and a serving at dinner set aside just for her, free of the wilted produce and other scavenged foodstuffs they're forced to use to pad out their own caloric requirements.

"Seriously, April, don't worry about it." Raphael's expression is as resolute and unyielding as his body, though the effect is someone lessened by the stained, frilly 50s apron tied daintily around his waist. On the stove behind him, next to the giant pot of chili meant for his brothers and father, is a smaller, merrily bubbling saucepan that he'd nonchalantly assured her was 100% Fancy Feast free. "'S no different than when Leo goes on one of his vegetarian kicks. You're _family_."

Then, to make it worse, they have to help her _move_.

"We keep _telling_ you," says Donatello, slightly muffled by the back of her couch. "You're _family_ , and family—"

"Okay, okay, I get it. Now _please_ —" She knows just how strong they are, but that's not enough to quiet her natural alarm at seeing Donnie peer down at her from the fire escape with her couch flung casually over one shoulder. "—at _least_ let someone help you carry that up the rest of the way. It's Ikea, it's not exactly meant to—"

"Ready up top, Don!" calls Raphael from the roof. Donatello, without hesitation, hurls the couch up in the air. April closes her eyes, body braced for the inevitable crash of her second-hand Kivik sectional against the alley pavement, but Raph plucks it out of the air with the grace of a seasoned outfielder.

April's just glad Leonardo had agreed to carry her dishes the six flights up to her top-floor apartment the old-fashioned way.

At least, like any other group of teenage boys, they eagerly accept payment in the form of food. April goes all out for the occasion: thickly sliced cucumbers, squash, and turnips over a mix of arugula and dark green kale; a serving platter of papaya, pears, and chilled watermelon; a whole crate of straw berries, glistening and firm. There's pizza, too, of course, but the way the turtles' eyes popped when they saw the spread of fresh produce made all the hours she spent at the Greenmarket scrutinizing every leaf and skin for the slightest bruise completely worth it.

Raph helps with the dishes while Donnie gets to work setting up her TV and various other electronics, tongue stuck out in avid concentration as he carefully color codes each power cord and cable before zip-tying it neatly into place (his face when he'd seen the rats nest behind the entertainment center in her old place had been, to put it mildly, priceless). Leonardo has taken on the task of giving her baseboards what he glowingly calls "the Leonardo Special", while Michelangelo...

"Yo Apes, mind if I use your little turtle room for a sec?"

His voice is completely casual, but the way he keeps shifting his weight from one foot to the other suggests that the request is slightly more urgent. She grins, picturing his clucking disapproval when he finds her reading collection sorely lacking in the Captain America and US Weekly department.

"Of course not, Mikey! TP's definitely stocked, but shout if I forgot soap or hand towels or anything like that."

"Will do," he says, winking and shooting her double finger guns before disappearing down the narrow hallway.

After she and Raph have finished putting away the plates and glasses, Donnie draws her into a prolonged conversation about securing her apartment wifi so she can patch into their network remotely. She's so engrossed in his proposed router specs that she doesn't notice Mikey's lengthening absence until Leo gets up, face vaguely concerned, and knocks pointedly on the bathroom door.

"Mikey? Need some help in there or something?"

It's a long minute before the door cracks open. Mikey mumbles something April doesn't catch.

"You're joking, right?"

Another mumbled response. Leo sighs and rubs at the bridge of his nose.

"This is why I _always_ ask before—"

"Dude," says Mikey, loud and clearly desperate. "I _know_ , no need to—"

" _Fine_. Fine."

The door creaks all the way open, then shuts again. April, while not the most experienced host, knows better than to draw attention to the bathroom difficulties of a guest, and so does her best to ignore that there are now _two_ giant turtles jammed into her bathroom.

Several minutes pass. Whatever the issue, it requires intense if muffled discussion between the two brothers. Until finally...

" _Oh for the love of_ —!"

Leo stumps out of the bathroom, looking flustered and annoyed, and wordlessly hauls Donnie off by the shell. When April turns to Raph for an explanation, he just shoots her this look that says he doesn't want to know and, in his professional opinion, _she_ probably doesn't want to know, either.

The bathroom door opens and shuts with a click. April, beside herself with curiosity, ignores Raph's continued warning glances and shuffles closer and closer until she can make out snatches of conversation.

"—joking, right?"

" _Dude!_ "

"—over with."

"Have you tried like—?"

"I'm _telling_ you, it's not gonna—!"

"No, no, go the other—"

This goes on for several more minutes before Leo and Donnie finally step back out into the hallway, each visibly torn between amusement and exacerbation.

"He forget how to wipe his own ass again?" asks Raph.

"Something like that," says Leo through gritted teeth. Behind him, Donnie tries to mask his snorting laughter with a badly mimed cough.

The toilet flushes. Four pairs of eyes turn expectantly towards the bathroom door. When Mikey finally emerges, beaming triumphantly as wiping his hands dry on his pants, he seems oblivious to the focused attention. "Yeah, you forgot the hand towels, April. No biggie. Do you know where they're packed? I'll dig 'em out for ya."

"It's okay," says April, immediately suspicious, though of what she doesn't know. "We'll just use paper towels until I find them."

"Cool," he beams. "I'll go grab the roll."

"Hold up!" Leo calls, rushing after him as Mikey exits towards the kitchen. "I'm still using those to—"

Raph pulls Donnie off into a corner. "So what actually happened?" he asks in a low voice he presumably thinks she can't hear. April seizes the opportunity to poke her head into the bathroom, stomach heavy with dread at what disaster she might find. A crack in the wall tilework from a stray shell edge, the toilet lid accidentally torn off by a super-strong arm, lingering puddles on the floor from a clog that took not two but _three_ ninjas to tackle, or maybe...

To her blinking surprise, there's nothing at all out of place. The toilet sits level and pristine, ringing faintly as the tank fills up with water. The floor is no dirtier than it was when she did her last walk-through with the landlord, and the toilet paper has even been tucked up and folded hotel style.

What in the _world_ could—?

"Hey April!" calls Donnie from the main room. "How pissed would your landlord be if I drilled through your ceiling to run cables for a security grid?"

" _Donnie don't you dare!"_ Fearing for her security deposit, April abandons the bathroom, all thoughts of Michelangelo and the Mysterious Mystery of the Toilet left in her wake.

* * *

The morning after the turtles' sixteenth birthday (almost a month off from their actual hatch dates, according to her father's notes, but close enough that there's no point challenging the veracity of their self-selected celebration date), April wakes up to a completely nonsensical and out-of-focus Snapchat story from Michelangelo (not at all out of the ordinary), an even _more_ incomprehensible soppy string of texts from Leonardo ( _very_ out of the ordinary), and three missed calls from Master Splinter ( _RED ALERT, RED ALERT_ ).

She dials back in a panic, brain flashing with one increasingly horrifying scenario after another. What if one of them has been injured? What if the Foot have tracked them to their new lair? What if—

Splinter answers on the fourth ring. "Ah, Miss O'Neil. I'm sorry if I—"

"What happened?" She almost drops the phone in her rush to strip out of her pajamas and into a bra and jeans. Whatever the crisis, she _definitely_ doesn't want to face it in boxer shorts and a bleach-stained Sandy Cheeks tank top. "Is everyone okay?"

"No one is dead," says the old rat un-reassuringly, his voice oddly strained. "It would seem that my sons have become afflicted with a rather sudden and uncomfortable ailment. While initially alarming, I have pinpointed the cause of their illness and determined the appropriate treatment. I apologize for the late calls. I did not mean to cause you worry."

April flops back onto her bed, eyes lifting briefly skyward in relief. It's a few breaths before she's able to calm her adrenaline-jangled nerves enough to untangle herself from the t-shirt she was unsuccessfully trying to pull on one-handed.

"It's okay. You can call me any time, you know that. How are the guys now?"

"Once more on the road to good health. Despite all attempts to the contrary."

Puzzled, April tucks her phone under her chin and shakes out the shirt for a second go. "What do you mean? Can I bring you anything? If you tell me their symptoms I'll stop by the pharmacy on my way down and pick something up."

"I have medicines," Splinter answers cryptically. "What I really need is... moral support." Then, almost as an afterthought: "Some Gatorade would be greatly appreciated, however."

He refuses to go into further detail over the phone, so April is forced to entertain every more graphic visions of disaster as she loads up her bike with a six pack of the largest bottles carried at her local corner market, rides the twelve blocks to her preferred manhole cover, and navigates the winding, stinking labyrinth of tunnels that leads to the Lair.

Master Splinter must have tracked her progress on the security cameras, because the inner security door swings open before she can punch in the first two digits of her door code. He looks even wearier than he'd sounded over the phone, limbs limp with exhaustion and the fur between his furrowed brow dark with irritation and sweat, but his ears perk up considerably when he sees the Gatorade.

"Glacier Freeze! An excellent choice. Come in, come in."

The Lair is quiet but for the distant, unmistakable thumping from the dojo of a body engaged in hard exercise. Most of the party decorations are still up, if a little more ragged and forlorn looking without the Cinderella filter of Donnie's pulsing disco lights. As they navigate between limp balloons and loops of half-torn streamers, April starts to wonder what, _exactly,_ the turtles got up to after she left. There's an odd stickiness to the floor between the pinball machine and Splinter's meditation garden, and everywhere she looks there are cups, empty pizza boxes, and scattered cleaning supplies.

They pass through the main living area, where Leonardo and Michelangelo are both slumped on the couch. April raises her hand in greeting, but Leo doesn't acknowledge her. He appears to be in some sort of shock, the rich leaf green of his skin faded to a shocking grey pallor, eyes round and red and fixed on a distant, invisible point. There's a large steel mixing bowl cupped loosely in his hands, and his mask hangs limply around his neck, morosely at odds with the party streamers still tangled around the straps of his scabbard. Mikey doesn't look much better than his elder brother, but he at least manages a weak wave in her direction, his own mixing bowl balanced on his knees while his other hand pats Leo's shoulder in a vague, comforting gesture.

"This way, if you please," Splinter prompts when she starts to make a break for the couch. April hesitates, torn between comforting her friends and obeying the order of her newfound sensei, but Splinter's tone is so grave and his stride so purposeful that she rushes to catch up with him, sparing one last, confused glance over her shoulder at the turtles.

As if on cue, Leo leans forward and heaves noiselessly into his bowl. Mikey's reassuring patting intensifies.

Splinter leads her back into his quarters: a large offshoot tunnel blocked off from the rest of the Lair with curtains and a patchwork of mended paper screens. The smell of incense is softer here, its use reverent and meditative rather than a desperate attempt to cover up the stink of sewer and four teenage boys. At the center of the room, guarded by one of Donnie's precious sun lamps, sits a single, especially prized bonsai tree, while the walls are decorated with scrolls of calligraphy and a collage of carefully arranged children's drawings. April slows to examine what is obviously a family portrait—four round green shapes with stick-like limbs clustered around a tall brown triangle with ears like Mickey Mouse—but Splinter beckons for her to join him by the large, battered armoire in the corner, its red paint peeling and singed at the corners but otherwise proud and unyielding.

"Master Splinter," she whispers. This whole room, with its thickly layered carpets and dim lighting, seems to disallow anything _but_ whispering. "What's—?"

" _Shh_ , child," he says, though not unkindly. He opens the cabinet, revealing shelves fit to bursting with tiny bottles, wooden boxes, and trays of carefully sorted paper envelopes sealed with string. His apothecary. He rummages through them, peering at each in turn before returning it to the cabinet with a shake of his head or adding it to the slowly growing pile on the work table to his left. April watches, fascinated, as he carefully measures out herbs and seeds and dollops of richly colored oils into a large stone mortar and grinds it into a paste. She startles when he finally gestures with one sharp flick of his wrist for her to give him the Gatorade, fumbling with the bottles as she breaks one out of its plastic ring and cracks open the lid. Nodding his thanks, Splinter solemnly spoons the paste into the blue liquid, closes the lid, and gives the bottle a vigorous shake.

When he's done, he holds the bottle up for her to see. A thick, herb-studded cloud obscures most of the once-neon sports drink, but with the light of the sunlamp behind it the bottle seems to glow, mystical but undeniably medicinal. It reminds her of the way the mutagen used to glow, the swirling promise within transfixing to little girl and grown father alike.

Splinter nods, seemingly satisfied. Then, to her surprise, he twists off the lid, throws back his head, and downs half of the bottle in a single gulp.

"Master Splinter?"

"It has been—" he sighs, ears twitching with visible agitation. "—a rather _trying_ evening."

Despite her lingering worry, it's hard not to crack a smile. "You don't say." She nods towards the remaining five bottles. "Do you have enough supplies to mix up remedies for the guys? I can run to the market and restock whatever you need."

"Thank you so much for your kind offer, Miss O'Neil, but that will not be necessary. I believe that the beverage as _originally_ mixed is exactly what my sons require."

He shuffles back towards the main Lair, the rest of the six-pack tucked under one arm and taking occasional sips from his own bottle. April trails along behind, mouthing silent, baffled apologies behind Splinter's back as the rat unceremoniously tosses a bottle at each of his couch-bound sons (Leo's bounces off his shoulder with a dull thump; Mikey catches his but instantly regrets the sudden movement, clutching at his stomach and cheeks bulging as he tries valiantly not to gag) before setting course for the dojo.

"I don't mean to be rude, Master Splinter, but whatever the guys have got, they're probably going to need more than Gatorade to shake off. I know you all are pretty tough, you'd _have_ to be to live this long in the sewer without regular access to antibiotics, but—" She pauses, distracted by the ever-louder thumps emanating from the dojo. As they draw closer, she can make out a faint, familiar voice calling out between each thump. _Counting_. "What exactly is Donnie _doing_ in there?"

"Invigorizing his immune system," answers Splinter. "While Donatello has the good fortune to not be as sorely afflicted as his brothers, I deemed it necessary to ensure his continued good health by allowing him to purge the remaining toxins from his body in a more... dignified manner."

"Uh..." She's not usually one to question the methods of a master, but after months and months of having to listen to her roommate pitch one bullshit smoothie cleanse after another April can't let it go unchallenged. "I don't think that's how it works. A virus or bacteria isn't something you can just sweat—"

" _Toxins_ ," repeats Splinter in a slightly louder voice. "Poisons to the body and spirit. Clouding judgment, making the self vulnerable to indiscretion and error." Whiskers twitching, he takes another swig of his Gatorade and calls into the dojo. "Isn't that right, Donatello?"

"Hai, sensei!" comes the distant, dizzy reply. Splinter humphs approvingly.

"Time for a break, my son. Replenish yourself!" He tosses in a Gatorade, humphing again as the bottle finds its target. The thumping and counting breaks off abruptly.

"Hai, sensei."

Helpless and more confused than ever, April doesn't know what to do other than follow obediently as Splinter strikes off towards a darkened alcove in the Lair she's never explored before. Unlike most of the main living spaces, there's an actual door set into the wall, it's obvious age and the pattern of the brickwork around it suggesting that it was part of this water treatment plant's original design. Splinter pushes through it without knocking, revealing a large, concrete and tile room with a long, cracked mirror along the far wall and a line of mismatched sinks. The main bathroom, April realizes with a start, though obviously expanded and modified from its original, more modest design to suit the needs of a family of mutant super-heroes.

The room is dominated by a large, Japanese style soaking tub sunk into the center of the floor, though there are a few smaller tubs suited for a single bather tucked into the corners. She's traveled enough to recognize the line of low-walled cubicles off to the left as a row of squat toilets, an oddity that she files away to process completely at a future date. The floor slopes slightly down to the right until it meets a wall studded with a long row of shower heads, a rainbow of mismatched shower curtains hung on looping tracks between each for privacy. In a further, bizarre indication of how wild the party got last night after she left, somebody dragged a large pile of quilts and moth-eaten throws into the showers and left them to soak under a steadily-hissing fountain of water. April wonders, sympathetically, which of the turtles had this misfortune to puke in his own bed.

At her side, Splinter sucks in a deep breath.

"HOW ARE YOU DOING, MY SON?"

His voice booms around the echoing bathroom, making her jump. The blanket pile shrinks back and moans in displeasure.

Well. Guess there's no need to look any further for Raphael, then.

"I see, I see," says Splinter. "How terrible. I alerted Miss O'Neil to your illness, and she was so kind as to stop by for a visit. Would you like her to sit with you for a while?"

The pile mumbles indistinctly.

"I _said_ ," Splinter continues, voice rising once more into a reverberating bellow. "WOULD YOU LIKE HER TO—"

"Yeah, yeah, _okay!_ " A green, tree trunk sized forearm emerges from the pile, waving feebly in surrender.

Nodding in satisfaction, Splinter turns to April and gestures back towards the main living area with a jerk of his head.

"Break time is over. Back to backflips. Would you mind keeping Raphael company for a while? His symptoms are rather more severe than his brothers', and recent events have shown it _ill advised_ to leave him to his own devices."

"Sure," April says, accepting the last two bottles of Gatorade. "Anything I can do to help."

" _Splendid_!" he beams. "If he is unable to rest, Raphael always enjoyed being read to as a child. I believe the parts of _Pinocchio_ set in the Land of Toys were a particular favorite." With one final, bewildering wink over his shoulder and an almost playful flick of his tail, Splinter pushes through the door, leaving them alone in the bathroom.

April approaches Raphael's limp form with cautious concern. As bad off as Leo and Mikey seem to be, at least they're still able to sit _upright_. From what little she can see of him Raph looks like a turtle struck dead, tangled limbs arranged listlessly on the cool tile floor, eyes slitted and milky beneath the protection of his third lid, the downpour of water not quite enough to wash away the reek of sickness and something else that her brain immediately latches onto as familiar, and for once it isn't the stink of sewer.

Suddenly, everything starts to make sense.

With a last look towards the door to make sure that the old rat is actually gone, April squats down and addresses the lump of wet quilts and ratted afghans in a low voice.

"Y'know, Raph, Master Splinter may not have ever been to any wild keggers, but I _have_ , and there's something suspiciously familiar about your 'symptoms'."

The blankets squirm guiltily. "Dunno what you're talkin' about."

She rolls a bottle of Gatorade between her palms, unable to suppress the smile tugging at the corner of her lips. "So did you guys bust a Foot holdout in a brewery or something and decide to celebrate with the spoils of war? Because big as you are, I have a hard time imagining you getting this hungover on anything short of rubbing alcohol."

"Close," Raph croaks. "Was some stuff Donnie made."

Her good humor vanishes as April considers the kind of bathtub gin a teenage super-genius would cook up in his spare time whenever he got bored of playing with solvents.

"Are you sure that was meant to actually be... _consumed_?"

"Donnie said it was safe enough in small doses."

"Uh-huh. And how many 'doses' did you each end up having?"

" _God_ ," he groans, what little she can see of his face turning somehow even greener. "I don't even want to think about it."

April leans back on her heels, torn between amusement and whatever it was Splinter must have felt when he stumbled upon the aftermath. "You're lucky you didn't _die_. All of you."

"Doesn't feel so lucky." With a sigh, Raph pulls the blankets higher around his shoulders, nuzzling idely at the damp cloth. "At least you missed the worst of it. Donnie kept telling us that it was impossible to literally puke your brains out, but I'm still not sure I believe him."

"About Donnie," April says with a frown. "How'd he wind up in the Hashi instead of puke purgatory like the rest of you? Was he not drinking?"

"Oh he was drinking all right," Raph grumbles. "Think he must've been sneaking sips whole time he was brewin'git, built up a tolerance or some shit. Or switched to water right after me and Leo started doing shot races. S'kinda a blur after that."

"Hydration _is_ important. Electrolytes, too." She dangles the Gatorade enticingly, amusement tempered with the memories of how bad her own first freshman year hangovers had been. "C'mon, drink up. I'm sure you didn't want to spend your second day at sixteen glued to the bathroom floor."

"Says you," says Raph, though he does eventually roll over just enough to reach for the Gatorade.

April's still new to this whole big sister/hogosha gig, but she does know enough to twist the top off for him before pressing it into his trembling fingers.

"Cheers," Raphael says flatly, grimacing as he swallows. "At least we managed to convince Dad that we all got a freak case of Funfetti poisoning or however it was Donnie spun it."

Taking the last bottle of Glacier Freeze for herself, April thinks back to Master Splinter's winking exit, so different from the fear he'd left in her voicemail just hours earlier. There's something else about this situation that's pricking at her brain, some detail that she's noticed but hasn't fully digested yet, something relevant to another not-quite-understood mystery. She takes a drink, lips pursed around the tart, not-quite-grape flavor, and watches Raph trying to tip the last few dregs of blue liquid into his mouth without spilling them all down his front, quilts clutched tightly around his head like a giant green babushka caught out in the rain.

"Sure you did, Raph. _Suuuure_ you did."

* * *

It's not until nearly a week later, when the turtles are all recovered from their hangovers and even Leo can take some gentle ribbing about his first bender without going white, that April finally puts two and two together.

Michelangelo in her bathroom.

Leonardo and Donatello and Michelangelo in her bathroom, three wills bent together to draw an unknown solution to an unknown problem.

Raphael in _their_ bathroom, half dead and pitiful under a mountain of sopping bed linens while Splinter made occasional trips to dump the sloshing contents of multiple large steel bowls into the long line of squat toilets.

Her own bathroom again, with its perfectly human proportions and perfectly western style toilet. Elevated, slim-seated, straight-backed, rigid, unyielding porcelain never intended for a user with a three and a half foot long shell grafted to their spine.

The answer _isn't_ an answer, really, but yet another question. A question her brain has been doing its best not to think about since it first popped into coherence, to no avail.

As a reporter, April O'Neil doesn't believe in questions that she shouldn't know the answers to. "Okay," she says, pretending for a moment longer that she's not in her bathroom talking to her own reflection with an ironing board and a stack of pillows belted to her back. "Let the experiment begin."

First, the most obvious choice. April leans forward, chest nearly level with her knees, and schooches back and forth on the closed lid until she finds a position where the rim of her improvised "shell" doesn't bang against the tank. While not exactly uncomfortable, she is perched farther forward than feels natural even at a petite 5'4". Frowning, she inches further forward, trying to approximate the turtle's much larger and bulkier builds, and only just catches herself from slipping off completely.

So much for _that_ idea.

God, she hasn't even _considered_ the problems posed by tails.

April tries a few more positions to no greater success: sideways, diagonal, backwards, backwards-with-a-split, backwards-with-a-lean. Even the tried and true public restroom hover proves prohibitively uncomfortable, nevermind how the edge of the ironing board keeps knocking the tank cover loose.

"Why am I doing this?" she mutters, spinning first one way, then another. "Why why _why_?"

Maybe she's going at solving this from the wrong direction. Donatello would chastise her for jumping into an experiment blindly without first establishing the known parameters of her hypothesis.

One: digestion was digestion was digestion. Humans shit. Turtles shit. Mutated humanoid ninja warrior turtles shit. No need to be embarrassed by any of that.

Two: one of the aforementioned mutant turtle ninjas had shit in her tiny Manhattan apartment bathroom and somehow managed to neither break nor befoul the throne.

Three: to accomplish this feat, he had had to consult with not one, but two brothers—one of whom was a certified genius—thus implying that the crucial position was not immediately obvious.

Four: at home, in the privacy of their own roomier lavatory, the turtles preferred to squat.

April sizes up the toilet again. Considers—as briefly and discretely as possible—the anatomy involved. The limitation of movement afforded by Michelangelo's usual outfit of basketball shorts or stretched-to-bursting football pants. The angle between thigh and torso while squatting.

An idea comes to her. Something from yoga class.

 _No._ Ridiculous.

And yet...

Slowly, deliberately, she raises the lid and seat with one foot, increasing the target area. She turns, shaking out her arms like an Olympic gymnast preparing for the uneven bars, and scrutinizes the floor in front of the toilet. It's been longer than she'd like to admit since she cleaned the floor, but then again those are _her_ germs down there. Did Nellie Bly balk at the idea of getting a little dirt on her hands? Did Woodward and Bernstein?

With a deep, steadying breath, April lowers herself into a careful squat, braces her hands shoulder-width apart on the cool hexagon tiles, tucks her knees as close to her armpits as she can in these jeans, shifts her weight off of her feet and forward, and _lifts_.

She's never been able to hold the crow pose for longer than a few seconds, but if she braces her feet against the outer rim of the toilet then maybe—

"April?"

Her head snaps towards the door, shifting her balance precariously. _What the hell is Donnie doing in her—?!_

"I know I said I'd come by tomorrow to look at your oven, but it's a quiet night and I saw your light was on so I thought I'd—"

With a crash she topples forward, ass over teakettle. One of the pillows pops loose, shooting off into the far corner like a goose-down propelled rocket. The ironing board catches the stray corner of her shower curtain and rips it off of its rings with a flourish, leaving April a heap of limbs, linens, and misused laundry implements grunting on her bathroom floor.

" _April?"_ Donnie's voice is closer now, deeper with concern. There's a careful, pointed knock on the door.

Feet kicking in a futile attempt to untangle herself from the curtain, April does her best to stall for time. "Yeah?"

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah."

"Can I come in?" His tone suggests he doesn't quite believe her, and might barge in anyway unless she gets real convincing real quick.

April looks at the raised toilet seat, the torn curtain, the slowly settling snowfall of feathers, the _fucking_ ironing board. Sighs deeply, resigned to her fate.

"Yeah."

Donnie cracks open the door, bo at the ready, and peers cautiously inside. He looks at the raised toilet seat, the torn curtain, the slowly settling snowfall of feathers, the fucking ironing board.

"Hi," April says, waving dejectedly from the floor.

"Hi," Donnie echoes. He collapses his bo with a quick flick of his wrist and tucks it out of sight. "So, uh... What happened in here?"

April purses her lips and directs her answer towards the ceiling. "In the pursuit of science, have you ever accidentally gone too far?"

Donnie's enormous booted feet shift nervously on her bathroom rug. How quickly the stolid soldier gives way to the awkwardly proportioned teenager. "I think you already know the answer to that."

"I do. And it's time for a little _quid pro quo_." She points as menacingly as a woman strapped to an ironing board can point. "If you value your life, you will never, _ever_ utter a word of this to _anyone_. Got it? Not. One. _Word_."

"One word about what?" he asks with the sincere ignorance of a well-practiced liar. April squints up at him, suddenly suspicious about all of those times Donnie had assured her that he had absolutely, positively _not_ hacked into any HR databases in order to boost her job prospects, but before she can give voice to her accusations he reaches down and hauls her to her feet.

"Y'know," he says, unwrapping her from the curtain. He keeps shooting little glances at the toilet, his purposefully casual tone betrayed by the faintest dimpling of his cheeks. "You could have just—"

" _Not_ ," April growls. "A _word_."

Donnie raises his hands in defeat, unable to contain his smile any longer. To his credit, though, he doesn't laugh when she almost bites it a second time banging the ironing board into the doorframe as she exits the bathroom. But judging by the tooth marks dotting his lower lip, it was a battle hard-won.

With a practiced toss of her head, April marches into her bedroom, changes out of her makeshift turtle closet cosplay, and joins Donatello in the kitchen.

"How many words, Donnie?"

"Ze-ro," he says, goggles down and lips exaggerating the shape of each syllable. "Nada. None. Nil. Zilch. Not one or two but—"

"Okay," she says, flopping next to him on the floor and trying to communicate, through pantomime, the pain and misfortune she's faced by not being able to bake so much as a goddamn Totino's pizza. "Make my oven work again, please."

"You got it," he says with a grin, and that, April thinks, is the end of that.

* * *

Casey's place is even smaller than her own, a narrow bookshelf of an apartment where the mini fridge does triple duty as side table and night stand next to the fold out couch that is technically also the master bedroom, a fact April suspects the turtles are well aware of the moment Leo raps on the window halfway through the Rangers game.

"Just checking in, Jones," he beams, plopping himself comfortably between them on the center cushion. He reeks of sweat and other people's blood, eyes and teeth glinting almost as brightly as the edge of his swords. "Who's winning?"

"The Flyers," says Casey through gritted teeth, wiping beer foam from his chin. He'd startled badly at the interruption, though if April's honest with herself she'd be relatively impressed by his impromptu impression of a fire hydrant. "Thought you guys got like, every ESPN offshoot ever in that tank of yours."

"Yeah," Raph grins, face twisted briefly in annoyance as he struggles to fit his shoulders through the narrow window. "But Donnie gets pissy when we nacho cheese all over the seats."

"It's true," Donnie shrugs, perched on the far arm of the couch and leaning all seven feet of his lanky frame into Casey's personal space. "And trust me, you won't like me when I'm pissy."

"You don't say," Casey snaps, his attention suddenly caught by the sight of Mikey taking selfies while wearing his corrections cap. "Hey hey hey, don't mess with that! That's city property!"

"You're under arrest," says Mikey sourly, twirling his nun chucks like a baton. "For the crime of looking like a shaved chinchilla."

Casey leaps to his feet, fists at the ready, and Donnie, smooth as silk, slips into his spot and stretches out his mile-long legs.

It takes Casey a moment to realize he's been had, but when he does it's so completely and utterly pitiful that April can't help but be charmed.

"You've got a lot to learn, Jones," she says, patting the arm rest beside her and shooting him a suggestive wink. "Now come and watch the game."

The guys chime in with a predictably juvenile chorus of whoops and kissy noises, which causes Casey to flush and lash out even more charmingly. As the game goes on and they turn their attentions back to the drama on the ice (with the exception of Raphael, who seems more focused on finding the coolest-looking way to lean nonchalantly in the corner as possible and shooting covert glances in Casey's direction to see if he's noticed), April lets her head fall back against the cushions and closes her eyes.

Sure, maybe her life _doesn't_ make sense the way it used to, maybe the world is even darker and more chaotic than even she'd realized, alone and eleven years old and watching her whole universe go up in flames, but there's light in it, too, and goodness, and people fighting from the shadows to make things better for people other than themselves, even if they never get so much as a thanks or a chance to step out of the dark and into the sun.

People who welcome her in with open arms and enthusiastically claim her as _family_.

"So," asks Casey, reluctantly warming up to his role as host. "Can I get any of you guys a drink?"

" _NO,_ " answer Leo and Raph collectively, at the same time April chimes in with a chiding "They're _sixteen_!"

"Jesus, sorry," Casey relents, eyeing the suddenly glass-eyed Leonardo as if afraid he's about to explode. "How about a Coke, then? I've got the kind with real sugar."

April was already most of three beers into this interrupted definitely-not-a-date when the guys dropped by, so when Mikey saunters towards the bathroom towards the end of the second period she doesn't think to give Casey a proper warning until it's already too late.

" _Dude_." Raphael scowls and tries to clear the air with one giant green hand. "Light a match or something next time, will ya?"

"Sorry," says Mikey, looking decidedly non-apologetic as he finishes re-tying his sweatshirt. "When nature calls..."

Casey stares into the bathroom. Stares at Michelangelo. Stares back into the bathroom. Turns round, lost eyes towards April.

"How...?" He gestures vaguely over his shoulder, as if at some invisible shell, then back towards the white porcelain cubicle barely larger than a phone booth. There's not even a proper shower stall, just a loosely hung curtain and a drain set crookedly into the floor. " _How?_ "

Patting him on the shoulder, April tosses her now-empty beer into the recycling and accepts the two freshly-opened bottles Donnie passes her way.

"Trust me," she says, pressing the dripping, oversweet soda into Casey's lax hand. "You don't wanna know."


End file.
